Rocky Mountain Club B5

As many of you know I gone through many custom Euro plates and organized a couple group buys in the past, which I had excellent experience with sites like www.LicensePlates.tv and www.CustomEuropeanPlates.com to name a few.

I misplaced my front plate (I know it's somewhere in my home or garage) and I didn't want to change my current plates or tear up my house finding it.I came across a website, www.CR8APL8.com, that claimed to sell legal custom replica state plates that are indistinguishable from the real thing. The website looks very amaturish filled with many silly art clips and annoying radio shack synthesizer music -- dispite their cheesy website they were the only company I came across that makes legal replica state plates, and for less than $30 I decided to give it a shot.

Soon after I realized I should've have listened to my intuition and taste and stayed away from them.The plate was a major disappointment and looked very fake even from a distance. I could see huge issues with the law if I put that plate on my car. The color of the graphics were too light and didn't align with the embossing, the embossing was very crude and was too wide for the graphics (it was 3/16" to 1/4" overextended from the printed graphic), the style of the font was not quite right (too thin and the serifs were incorrect), the printing was not very high resolution (the screen printing could be seen), and the background was not reflective and was slightly off white.

I sent an e-mail to George T. Ades (a.k.a. The Mad Greek on the website), the owner of CR8APL8 to share my disappointment and see if I could get a refund or a quality replacement. The reply from George was literally a rude awakening. He was incredibly rude, unprofessional, and made random obscene/explicit insults and personal attacks for no apparent reason. I had remarks like "I should shove the plate up my ass..." which was one of the tamer remarks. He also had his employees (or thugs) send insulting emails to me too.I was shocked but I still kept a calm and rational manner. He claimed there was nothing wrong with the plate and said he never had a complaint in the 25 years they were in business. George was certainly a Mad Greek and lacked any professionalism, courtesy and education based on the kind of service I received. I have never felt so angry and infuriated.

I didn't get anywhere with him, and did some poking around. I filed a complaint with the BBB which I found out that his company received 9 recent complaints and with an overall poor rating, I also complained to my credit card and asked them to watch out for any unauthorized charges from them just to be safe. I also discovered other customers with the same experience on other car forum boards, and CR8APL8's primary business comes from selling novelty plates and tourist souveniers at theme parks and fairs (definitely not the car entheusists type). They bragged about being featured on the cover of a VW Bug magazine but that issues was over 20 years ago. I was being pretty persistant and with my BBB and credit card complaint I managed to send my plate back with a refund to my credit card.

I just want to spread the word, eventhough most will not likely consider their products, because no one deserves this kind of outrageous customer service.Their unfortunate complany name, CR8APL8, should be corrected to CRAP-PL8s ...or better yet, put out of business.